Pollution levels midday Wednesday in central Beijing were mostly between 250 and 300 on the city’s air quality index – suggesting the restrictions were having an effect.
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“If these traffic restrictions can really solve the smog problem and make the air in Beijing clean, I’m willing to face such limits on a daily basis”, said Ma Qiansen, 25, who works for an advertising company and was commuting by subway Tuesday because he was not permitted to drive.
“Kids these days fall sick much more easily than we did when we were kids, yet we were not as wealthy as them, and we certainly didn’t enjoy as much convenience”, she added.
A Beijing resident said an air purifier has been installed in the school with funds raised from parents. What bothers me the most is that my child may have a very negative view of nature.
Red alert level means extra measures will be undertaken like only odd or even-numbered license plates on the road will be allowed on a given time.
Beijing prepared to lift its first ever red alert for smog on Thursday, as blue skies and sunshine replaced the thick haze that covered the city for days.
Smog has been a public health concern in Beijing for years but the government’s response has drawn scrutiny in the past week, following criticism that it did not issue a red alert during an earlier episode of hazardous smog.
This comes just after Beijing issued its first ever red alert for smog this week, taking extreme measures which include closing schools, removing half the cars from the road and halting construction in an (not quite) all-out effort to improve the air quality.
Customs officers in China’s commercial capital, Shanghai, have discovered 120,000 fake respiratory masks, supposedly made by USA diversified manufacturer 3M Co, state media said on Wednesday. Convenience stores sold air-filtering masks at brisk rates, and health-food stores promoted pear juice as a traditional Chinese tonic for the lungs.
That indicated that the traffic restrictions were effective but more work needs to be done to reduce emissions from coal burning, said Chai.
Coal-powered winter heating systems are a big cause of the smog that blights north China at this time of year.
China’s booming economy depends on coal for 64 percent of its primary energy, but the country has been trying to clean up or close the smaller, more polluting of its coal power plants, according to financial news agency Bloomberg.
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The spike in air pollution has created opportunities for China’s notorious counterfeiters.
